Worldwide Peasant Struggles

By Maura Silva

Translated by Omid Afzalalghom

It was early evening on Tuesday (15th) when Cinquentenário de Israel Square, in the Higienópolis neighbourhood of São Paulo, began to be lit up by candles lit in honour of the 200-plus people killed in recent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. 

The vigil, organised by the Palestine for All Movement (MOPAT), brought together about 500 people and featured videos, poems and musical interventions about Palestine.

A new Israeli military offensive has already resulted in hundreds of arrests and deaths in occupied Palestine.

In one of many protests on Thursday April 17, around 500 MST workers  from the Brazilian Federal District (state to which Brasilia, nation's capital, belongs to) and its surroundings blocked sections of the BR 020 highway, between the Planaltina (DF) and Formosa (GO) municipalities, at the height of kilometer 43 and the BR 070 highway, in direction towards Águas Lindas de Goiás. 

The 1^st Continental Assembly of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) met between May 16-May 20. It brought together more than 200 delegates from 22 Latin American countries representing diverse social movements.

We have not had such vigorous street mobilizations since the campaign for “Rights Now” in the '80s.  The protests which exploded with the youth indignation were just the tip of the iceberg of the profound social and economic problems that persist in our society.  On one hand, the big cities have become a living hell, where workers pay high costs for low quality public transport.  Besides that, they spend two or three hours a day traveling, a pure waste of time.

Those who managed to buy an automobile, financed by international finance capital, are realizing that they paid dearly for the ability not to be able to move.  The auto assembly companies and the associated banks have never before sent so much money abroad.

Seventeen years have passed since that fateful April 17. On that day in 1996, a march of rural workers organized by the MST was blockaded and attacked by military police in the city of Eldorado dos Carajás, Pará state. 19 people were killed on the spot and 2 others died days afterwards. The day of the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre has officially become the National Day of Struggle for Land Reform.

The People of Latin America Lost a Leader and a Builder of Ideas!

The death of Hugo Chávez represents an irreparable loss to all the peoples of Latin America.

His humble origins, his path as a military nationalist and his unwavering commitment to the project of the freedom of the Venezuelan people, turned him into a popular leader of the whole continent.

By José Coutinho Junior

More than 200 people from various social movements, political parties and NGOs gathered this past Sunday (12/9), at the National School Florestan Fernandes (ENFF) for the Meeting of Friends and Friends of the MST. João Pedro Stedile, MST leader, began the meeting with an analysis of the forces acting on the class struggle of the Brazilian society and how this is reflected in the countryside.

"What we face today in agriculture is no longer the backward landowner, now, when we fight for land it is necessary to face the entire capitalist system, represented mainly by finance capital and the bourgeoisie, to see that they do not have total hegemony in government clinging together with the judiciary and the media."

FINAL DECLARATION OF THE PEOPLES’ SUMMIT AT RIO+20 FOR SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN DEFENSE OF THE COMMONS, AGAINST THE COMMODIFICATION OF LIFE

MST leader Elias Araujo was in the US to accept, on behalf of the MST the Food Sovereignty Prize for 2011, given by the Community Food Security Coalition.  On November 9 2011, Elias was ased to address the general assembly of Occupy Oakland.  Click on photo for a a link to the podcast of Elias' remarks. [NOTE: click on red down arrow to play speech.]